Review: Overbite

Overbite by Meg Cabot (2011)
278 pagesSeries:Insatiable #2Main Characters: Meena Harper, Lucien Antonescu, Alaric Wulf, Jonathan Harper, Father Henrique,Plot Synopsis: Meena Harper has a special gift, but it’s only now that anyone’s ever appreciated it. The Palatine Guard — a powerful secret demon-hunting unit of the Vatican — has hired her to work at their new branch in Lower Manhattan. With Meena’s ability to predict how everyone she meets will die, the Palatine finally has a chance against the undead.

Sure, her ex-boyfriend was Lucien Antonescu, son of Dracula, the prince of darkness. But that was before he (and their relationship) went up in flames. Now Meena’s sworn off vampires for good … at least until she can prove her theory that just because they’ve lost their souls doesn’t mean demons have lost the ability to love.

Meena knows convincing her co-workers — including her partner, über-demon-hunter Alaric Wulf — that vampires can be redeemed won’t be easy … especially when a deadly new threat seems to be endangering not just lives of the Palatine, but Meena’s friends and family as well.

But Meena isn’t the Palatine’s only hope. Father Henrique — aka Padre Caliente — New York City’s youngest, most charming priest, has also been assigned to the case.

So why doesn’t Meena — or Alaric — trust him?

As she begins unraveling the truth, Meena finds her loyalties tested, her true feelings laid bare … and temptations she never even imagined existed, but finds impossible to resist.Setting: New York

After loving Insatiable, I couldn’t wait for the sequel and I tore through it pretty quickly. But I have to say it was somewhat disappointing. At the beginning of the book Meena is now working for the Palatine Guard who hunt vampires. Although she and Lucien are over, she still thinks about him and has undertaken a secret project to try and prove that he’s not really evil. While this seems like a great idea, I have to say she came off as really whiny when she was trying to defend him and get others on board.

Of course Alaric still has a secret crush on her and doesn’t want to hear Lucien mentioned. Then when tourists start disappearing, everyone thinks it’s Lucien. So Meena wants to prove his innocence and help him. Turns out he believes he’s evil and has decided he’ll just go to the dark side. So most of the book has Lucien moping around and being all depressed, saying how evil he is and that he was just denying his true nature all while Meena tries to convince him otherwise.

This goes on for far too long in my opinion until some other information is finally revealed about the true nature of the killings and what’s going on. I did like the ending because it wasn’t typical and I wasn’t expecting it, yet it did tie things up nicely. Still, overall quite disappointing.